Thursday, 31 July 2014

Seabase Atlantica: The Whole Sorry Story - part one

Introduction

I was first introduced
to the bizarre-ness that is (or rather was) Seabase Atlantica by an
American friend called Paul Morehouse back in the mid-nineties. It
was the dawn of the internet age and Paul lived just outside
Philadelphia in the US. I’ve since lost touch with him. A friend of
a friend told me he got married and moved to Canada whilst someone I
met a few years ago told me, he had died from a septic paper cut.
Whatever his fate, I have him to thank for this little effort. His
was the original research and most of the words within the episode
synopses are his. All I have done is to embellish the facts with
fresh ones that I have uncovered in the two decades since our first
efforts.

What is ‘Seabase
Atlantica’?

In short, it was a TV
science fiction adventure series made in the late sixties/early
seventies (accounts differ with dates) by the later Master of cinema
disaster, Irwin Allen. Irwin at the time had made a name for himself
in television with success with the likes of ‘Lost in Space’ and
‘Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea’ – both of which were known in
equal measures for both their incredible special effects and their
increasingly bizarre storylines.

‘Seabase Atlantica’
built on all this… or at least, it is reputed to have. The thing
is, nobody actually remembers it and very few have actually seen it.

Irwin Allen’s ‘Devon
Productions’ made the series for Twentieth Century Fox at a time
when the studio was in a dire financial situation. A lot of money was
ploughed into ‘Seabase Atlantica’ as a production but the show
saw very little return. The reasons are subject to conjecture but the
most enduring one suggests that it was made without a sale to a major
network such as ABC or CBS. It was assumed that one of them would buy
the finished product but instead, all of them turned their noses up
at it. At the last minute, some quick thinking saw the first season
air on a handful of local syndicated stations and there are reports
that it was sighted in Norway in 1972 or possibly it was Sweden in
1973 – we just don’t know!

Click to enlarge

One of the most tangible sightings was
in the UK where early copies of a 1969 edition of the ‘Radio Times’
heralded its forthcoming debut on BBC1 but most archive copies from
the period seem to suggest these early editions were withdrawn and
reprinted with alternative programming for the show’s alleged
Saturday night slot.

Fate would deal
‘Seabase Atlantica’ a further blow in 1971 – a blow that would
involve the US government and seal the show’s future in a permanent
limbo. Part two will follow shortly.

SEABASE ATLANTICA - season one episode guide - part one

September 1969 - March 1970

REGULAR
CAST:

ROBERT
YOUNG…Professor Jonathan Crutch

JAMES
DARREN…Captain Anthony ‘Ziggy’ Shapiro

CHAD
MARTIN…Aqua, the Mer-boy

BARBARA
EDEN…Susan Crutch

JUDY
ALLEN…Cindy Crutch

JONATHAN
HARRIS…Voice of Debbie the Robot

1.01

INVASION OF THE WEREWOLF ROBOT

Wr.
William Welch (from a story by Irwin Allen)

Dir.
Felix Feist

Prof
Jon Crutch is putting the finishing touches to his new invention –
the hyper-intelligent robotoid his daughter has christened ‘Debbie’.
Suddenly, a power surge causes it to go out of control and to raid
the sea base’s peutronic reactor. Affected by the radiation, the
robot is transformed into a werewolf and kidnaps little Cindy Crutch.
Ziggy follows them to a cavern beneath the ocean floor where he is
able to activate some radiation dampening plankton and cure the
robot’s lycanthropy. Debbie is later repaired and becomes the
latest member of the Crutch family.

1.02

THE
RETURN OF KING PRAWN

Wr.
Arthur Weiss (from a story by Harlan Ellison)

Dir.
Robert Spar

Guest
cast: Tim O’Connor (The Prawn).

A
giant intelligent prawn man invades the aqua-base, claiming that the
Crutch family are destroying the seabed with their latest experiments
with nuclear fission. He hypnotises Aqua and commands him to put the
peutronic pile on overload. However, the super-prawn is overcome by
the radiation and faints.

(Tim O’Connor had just finished filming an episode
of ‘Mannix’ when he got the call to the Seabase Atlantica set.
Despite his and his agent’s effort, he was unable to get out of his
contract for the role.)

1.03

WISH
UPON A CRAB

Wr.
Bob and Esther Mitchell

Dir.
Sobey Martin

Guest
Cast: Carroll O’Connor (Voice of Crab)

A
Red spy satellite crashes in the sea near the base and begins leaking
deadly radioactive isotopes into the sea. Cindy pet spider crab finds
the wrecked satellite and, affected by the radiation, it grows to
enormous proportions and threatens the base. With Prof. Crutch’s
help, Cindy is able to communicate telepathically with the crab and
tormented by what it has done, it explodes.

(Richard Basehart was originally cast as the crab’s
voice but was overdubbed in post because the director wanted a more
friendly sounding crab.)

1.04

GHOST
OF THE AIRWAYS

Wr.
Shimon Wincelberg and Steven Bochco

Dir.
James Goldstone

Guest
cast: Florence Henderson (The Ghost of Amelia Earhart).

Jon
Crutch discovers the wreckage of Amelia Earhart’s plane and takes
it back for study to Seabase Atlantica. There, the poltergeist spirit
of Miss Earhart reeks havoc and eventually takes over the body of
Susan Crutch. Ziggy manages to render her unconscious and places her
in a lead-lined anti-gravity chamber. Switching on the decompression
oscillator, he is able to exorcise the spirit and destroy the phantom
aviator forever.

The
Crutch family accidentally discover the lost kingdom of Atlantis and
its king – Anthrax – falls in love with Susan. If the others are
to ever leave the city, Susan must stay behind and marry the monarch.
The only way to escape is for Ziggy to battle the Arbitron – a
giant two-legged sea urchin – and claim Susan for his own.

Giant
men from the centre of the sun imprison Ziggy and Susan in their
space zoo on the planet Mercury. Jon is forced to bargain with the
aliens using the sea base’s peutronium rods – a power source that
they desperately desire.

(Some sources suggest that the filming of this
episode led to guest star Basil Rathbone’s shingles during his
final years.)

A
golden alien man arrives at Seabase Atlantica to place Jon Crutch on
trial for his continued bastardising of the Earth’s resources.
Cindy is forced to use a telepathic memorathon to call up incidents
from her father’s past to plead his innocence. The alien decides to
finally grant Crutch his freedom when he sees a single tear in the
child’s eye. (This story features
footage from the unseen pilot ‘God Thing With Nine Brains” and
previous episodes. It was hastily made when star Robert Young turned
up drunk and dyed green on set one morning following a stag do for
actor James Brolin.)

1.08

PREHISTORIC
PERIL

Wr.
Arthur Weiss and Irwin Allen

Dir.
Irwin Allen

A
massive explosion in the seabase’s peutron store catapults the
Crutch family back to prehistorical times where they battle stock
footage from Irwin Allen’s movie ‘The Lost World’. As the local
volcano threatens to devour them all, Cindy wakes up. It was all a
dream.

(Another episode hastily put together
to allow star Robert Young to recover further.)

Evil
red scientists infiltrate the seabase and its peutron rods. However,
they become infected by their atom radiation and turn into
werewolves. The added radiation count reanimates Cindy’s dead pet
crab, which kills the atom-wolves in a massive nucleonic explosion.
(This episode re-used footage from
‘Wish Upon a Crab’)

A
visiting pop band are unaware that their manager, Mr. Flexiton, is
really a foreign agent who plans to use the group’s music to
enslave and control the world’s youth population. Aqua the Mer-boy
is mysteriously unaffected and smothers the group’s amplifiers with
liquid seaweed before their live broadcast from Atlantica can take
place. Mr. Flexiton is beaten to death by a gorilla. (The song featured in this episode, ‘I Wanna Kiss
Your Octopus’, was released as a single by The Kelp Drifters and
got to number sixty-eight for one week in the Billboard Top 100 until
someone noticed.)

A
giant fungoid man from space arrives at the base. Its plan is to
kidnap humans as food for its master, Dossar – an energy being from
the planet Mercurion. Crutch lures him to the base’s main control
centre where Debbie the Robot short-circuits him. (Actor Ronnie Reagan had originally requested no
on-screen credit for his role but this was declined as the graphics
department had already ordered the letraset.)

1.12

SCRIPT
OF DOOM

Wr.
Sidney Marshall

Dir.
Sobey Martin

Guest
cast: Vincent Price (Phutt), Bill Williams Jnr (Mummy man).

The
Crutch family discover an ancient scroll at the bottom of the sea,
little realising that once its hieroglyphs are translated, it will
summon the Egyptian god, Phutt, who plans to snuff out all life on
Earth. He doesn’t though because of something. (Vincent Price auctioned off the dentures he used in
this episode in the 1980s to raise money for saving babies. They
fetched $35 before tax)

1.13

FIRE
AT THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA

Wr.
Charles Bennett (from a story by Irwin Allen)

Dir.
Harry Harris

A
long dead volcano erupts and threatens to engulf the seabase. Jon and
Ziggy journey to cap the crater with a peutron plug, little realising
that little Cindy is trapped in a cave beneath the raging inferno.
It’s up to Aqua the Mer-boy to rescue her before the area is
showered with deadly peutronic particles.

(Some of the background plates of the
volcanic fire were re-used by Allen in the movie ‘The Towering
Inferno’)Continued in part two here

Seabase Atlantica: The
Whole Sorry Story

Written by Andrew-Mark
Thompson

Based on material
originally written and researched by Paul Morehouse and first
published in the magazine ‘FanGrok’

With humble
acknowledgement to the work of Adam Richards and Owen Richards.

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About Me

I am a 53 year old former teenager based in the city of Derby. I have been a part of Dr WHO fandom since the late 70s and especially love it when young teenage fans correct the intentional errors in my artwork or reply to my posts with a quote from City of Death or any of the other 600 odd classic series episodes (but especially City of Death). I don't do requests... unless they are actually imaginative and funny. And certainly don't do them if the magic word "please" isn't included. I am single and don't even own a cat I can tweet pictures of. Apart from that, I'm actually quite friendly. Mostly.